Yugoslav Civil War
The Yugoslav Civil War was a major Southern European conflict that lasted from October 30th, 1939 to June 5th, 1940. The Yugoslav Civil War was the result of rising ethnic tensions in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between Roman Catholic Croatians and Eastern Orthodox Serbians. Many consider the Yugoslav Civil War to be a secondary front of the Versailles War as it occurred concurrently and was manipulated by Axis and Allied Powers alike. As such many Roman Bloc members supported the Allied Powers by proxy as the Balkan Entente was mostly a proxy for the Axis Powers The Yugoslav Civil War was a major conflict October 30th, 1939 to June 5th, 1940 Names Participants Roman Bloc Powers: * Kingdom of Italy: Benito Mussolini * Illyria: Slavko Kvaternik * Kingdom of Albania: Shefqet Vërlaci * Kingdom of Greece: Ioannis Metaxas * Spanish State: Francisco Franco (supporter) * Portuguese Republic: António de Oliveira Salazar (supporter) Balkan Entente Powers: * Kingdom of Serbia: Milan Nedić * Kingdom of Romania: Ion Antonescu * Kingdom of Hungary: Ferenc Szálasi * Kingdom of Bulgaria: Aleksandar Tsankov * Nazi Germany: Adolf Hitler (supporter) Pre-War Events On October 17th, 1939, Nazi Germany sends an ultimatum to Regent Prince Paul of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia demanding they join the Axis. With Italy now neutral, Germany needed the ports of Croatia to gain access to the Mediterranean as they hoped to potential stage a naval invasion of the southern coast of France which remained relatively unprotected. On October 24th, Regent Prince Paul of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis Powers due to his pro-German history and a hope to use the war as a unifying force for Yugoslavia. This proved to be extremely unpopular with the Croatian population of Yugoslavia who began rioting against this ethnic Serbian prince dragging Yugoslavia into the war. This ethnic tension between the Croatians (backed by the Slovenians) and the Serbians explodes on October 30th when Regent Prince Paul is shot and killed by a Croatian nationalist. Croatian Politician Vladko Maček declares the independence of the Republic of Croatia from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Federation of Illyria consisted of the Yugoslav Banates of Drava, Sava and Littoral. Ethnic Slovenes sided with the Croatians over the Serbians and supported the new republic having equal rights among their Croatian counterparts. October 1939 -October 17th, 1939: Nazi Germany sends an ultimatum to Regent Prince Paul of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia demanding they join the Axis. With Italy now neutral, Germany needed the ports of Croatia to gain access to the Mediterranean as they hoped to potential stage a naval invasion of the southern coast of France which remained relatively unprotected. -October 24th, 1939: Regent Prince Paul of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis Powers due to his pro-German history and a hope to use the war as a unifying force for Yugoslavia. This proved to be extremely unpopular with the Croatian population of Yugoslavia who began rioting against this ethnic Serbian prince dragging Yugoslavia into the war. -October 30th, 1939: Regent Prince Paul is shot and killed by a Croatian nationalist. Croatian Politician Vladko Maček declares the independence of the Republic of Croatia from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. -October 31st, 1939: Serbian General Milan Nedić, declares Peter II of age and the rightful heir to the Yugoslav throne. Peter II is crowned the King of the new Kingdom of Serbia. November 1939 -November 1st, 1939: The Kingdom of Serbia joins the Axis Powers. -November 2nd, 1939: While Mussolini had declared his neutrality, he feared an invasion of northern Italy (which was Italy’s industrial heart) and begins funding the Croatians and supplying it with arms (albeit outdated ones). Mussolini calls for the militarization of the Italy’s northern border. -November 5th, 1939: While Germany had wanted to personally invade Italy for its betrayal they were already stretched too thin in France, Scandinavia and Poland and were cut off by the Alps between Austria and Northern Italy as such they ordered their ally’s Romania and Hungary to send troops to support the Kingdom of Serbia. This alliance of Romania, Hungary and Serbia would be known as the Balkan Entente. Hitler hoped the Balkan Entente would be able to rapidly defeat Croatia and then take northern Italy where a majority of Italy’s industry resided essentially preventing them from ever entering the war. Ironically the Balkan Entente would take precious resources away from fighting the Soviets as they both attempted to hold the line as well as defeat the Italians and their allies. Hungary and Romania were hesitant about supporting Serbia as they both desired land currently held by the Serbians, the Hungarians desiring the Vojvodina region of Serbia and the Romanians desiring the Banat region of Serbia. Tensions were also high between Romania and Hungary as Hungary desired the Szeklerlands of Romania as such there was great infighting between Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian forces. -November 20th, 1939: With many of the Crotians being beaten back by Balkan Entente forces in Yugoslavia, the Balkan Entente Army and begin an invasion of the Croatian city of Osijek. -November 30th, 1939: The Balkan Entente captures Osijek and eastern parts of the Sava Province of Croatia. The Serbians in the region of Krajina declare their independence from Illyria and join the Serbian Army. Croatian General Slavko Kvaternik leads a coup against the more moderate leader of Crotia, Vladko Maček. Kvaternik was aided by both Catholic Slovenian Nationalists and Croatian Nationalists. The coup was successful and Kvaternik united the Republic of Croatia and the Slovenian territories to form the Illyrian Republic or officially the Illyrian Republic of Croatia and Slovenia. He worked on creating greater unity between Croatians and Slovenians to better support the war effort. December 1939 -December 1st, 1939: Prime Minister Shefqet Vërlaci of the Italian controlled Kingdom of Albania publicly declares war on the Balkan Entente citing the protection of ethnic Albanians in Serbian controlled Kosovo. Vërlaci did so without prior Italian consent which would result in his ousting after the war. -December 3rd, 1939: Mussolini unwilling to lose his foothold in the Balkans, Albania, declares war on the Balkan Entente. This also served to gain favor with the Albanians. -December 4th, 1939: Hitler officially declares war on Italy. Mussolini sends an ambassador to Portugal and Spain, asking them to ally with the Italians against the Germans. Mussolini recognized Italy was nowhere near ready to fight a full war and as such called upon support from Spain who Italy had aided during the Spanish Civil War and Portugal who were hesitant to join the war but accepted after Mussolini agreeing to help Portugal expands its colonial possessions after the war. Spain and Portugal begin sending resources, troops and resources to Italy. These troops would become known as the Iberian Volunteer Corps. Illyria joins the Latin Bloc now renamed to the Roman Bloc as it contained the territory of the Roman Empire. -December 5th, 1939: Albania and Illyria officially join the Roman Bloc. -December 7th, 1939: Pope Pius XII who had been relatively quiet on the war steps forward to support the Catholic brotherhood and alliance between Illyria and Italy -December 9th, 1939: The Balkan Entente issues an ultimatum to Prime Minister Georgi Kyoseivanov of Bulgaria demanding that Bulgaria join the Balkan Entente. -December 10th, 1939: Italian Ambassador to France, Raffaele Guariglia is sent by Benito Mussolini to Marseille to meet with President Albert François Lebrun of France. Guariglia offers a war time treaty between the Italians and French allowing French access to Italian ports in exchange for free access through the Suez Canal until the war was over. France accepts and while they still distrusted the Italians and the Roman Bloc for their Totalist authoritarian ideologies they recognized that Italy would be keeping Germany’s allies busy, so France would deal with Germany alone. This would become known as the Guariglia Agreement. -December 15th, 1939: Serbian forces quickly take Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria while Romanian forces take Varna. They establish a puppet fascist government with Bulgarian fascist, Aleksandar Tsankov as its leader. Roma living in Bulgaria flee to East Poland to join up with the Slobozîmos Vojska. -December 15th, 1939: Italy begins mobilizing massive amounts of troops and colonial subjects in its East African colonies and begins shipping them up north through the Suez Canal and landing them on Italian controlled Rhodes before mobilizing them to the Balkans or to the Italian peninsula. -December 20th, 1939: Roman Bloc forces are directed to the Albanian city of Shkodër as well as to the Italian city of Trieste and Metković, a Croatian coastal city. -December 21st, 1939: Ioannis Metaxas of Greece fearing an invasion from fascist Bulgaria or Serbia sends an ambassador to Mussolini requesting an alliance. -December 22nd, 1939: In a very controversial move, Mussolini commands his forces still stationed in Italian East Africa to invade French Djibouti citing it as a potential 5th column due to the emergence of French fascists. Djibouti is quickly annexed and is renamed Tagiura after the Gulf of Tadjoura. The Free French government condemns this but has no forces available to retake it. -December 24th, 1939: The Kingdom of Greece declares war on the Balkan Entente and joins the Roman Bloc. -December 25th, 1939: The Battle of Christmas takes place with Roman Bloc forces stationed in Metković and Shkodër stage an invasion of the Serbian province of Zeta and within the night manage to take Cetinje, the capital of the province. The Balkan Entente were completely surprised by this as they expected the Roman Catholic Italians to delay their invasion until after Christmas and as such hadn’t protected the city as well. -December 26th, 1939: Roman Bloc forces take Dubrovnik and Podgorica. January 1940 -January 10th, 1940: The Roman Bloc fully captures the Serbian province of Zeta leaving the Kingdom of Serbia officially land-locked and cut off from the Mediterranean. -January 20th, 1940: Italian forces begin Cavalletta di Operazione (Operation Grasshopper). While they greatly lacked in equipment and resources (only being bolstered by their Portuguese, Greek and Spanish allies), Cavalletta worked to negate that by spreading the Balkan Entente extremely thin by causing multiple battles to spring up all over the Balkans sending Balkan Entente forces in all directions to deal with the insurrections allowing the smaller less equipped Roman Bloc forces to handle them. -January 21st, 1940: Operation Cavalletta goes into effect with the Greek invasion of Bulgaria, the Albanian invasion of Serbian controlled Vardar Banovina and Illyrian-Italian invasion of the Serbian controlled Banovinas of Drina and Vrbas. -January30th, 1940: Just as Italian Field Marshal, Giovanni Messe had planned, in reaction to the multiple incursions the Balkan Entente fractured with Hungarian forces attempting to invade northern Illyria while Serbian forces are split combatting Illyrian-Italian forces in Bosnia while also dealing with Albanian and Greek forces in Vardar, Bulgaria is dealing with the Greek invasion and is supported by Romania. February 1940 -February 13th, 1940: Albanian forces manage to take Skopje, the capital of the Vardar Banovina. -February 14th, 1940: Prime Minister Milan Nedić of the Kingdom of Serbia in response to the loss of Serbian Krajina and Skopje calls for the ethnic cleansing of all Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. -February 17th, 1940: Illyrian forces manage to retake Serbian Krajina and its eastern territory. -February 28th, 1940: Greek forces finally manage to push through the Rhodopes Mountains separating southern Bulgaria from Greece and take the cities of Smolyan and Kardzhali. March 1940 -March 3rd, 1940: Illyrian forces begin Operation Krokodil (Crocodile) using the Croatian city of Županja and Bosniak city of Bugojno as jumping off points for a two-pronged pincer attack to encircle to Serbian majority province of Vrbas. -March 5th, 1940: Greek forces are met by Bulgarian Partisans who join up with them to help overthrow the fascist government of Bulgaria. -March 9th, 1940: Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo kill thousands of Muslim Kosovars in the city of Pristina in what would become known as the Kosovar Genocide. -March 11th, 1940: Bosnian Partisan forces manage to retake the city of Sarajevo from Serbian control. -March 19th, 1940: In response to the Kosovar Genocide, Albanian, Illyrian and Macedonian Partisan forces stationed in Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania initiate a three-pronged assault on Serbian controlled Kosovo. -March 24th, 1940: Albanian, Illyrian and Macedonian Partisans defeat the Serbian forces stationed in Kosovo. -March 25th, 1940: Despite Romanian forces bolstering the Bulgarians, the Greek-Bulgarian Partisan forces manage to take Plovdiv. April 1940 -April 1st, 1940: Hungary begins to question the validity of the Balkan Entente seeing as how it had supplied thousands of troops to Serbia just to be defeated. -April 3rd, 1940: Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi of Hungary declares war on the Kingdom of Serbia and invades the Serbian region of Vojvodina which had a predominant ethnic Hungarian minority. This came as a large surprise to both Axis and Allies alike and highlighted the problem of the Balkan Entente as fascism emboldens revanchist ideals which is problematic when your supposed allies control land you view as rightfully yours. -April 5th, 1940: Albanian-Illyrian-Italian forces take advantage of the chaos from Szálasi’s declaration of war and manages to retake the Banovina of Drina completely encircling the Serbian Banovina of Vrbas. -April 30th, 1940: Italian-Illyrian forces take the Serbian Banovina of Vrbas and the city of Banja Luca. May 1940 -May 5th, 1940: Illyrian Prime Minister Slavko Kvaternik preparing for the post-war period began the systematic expulsion of Ethnic Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo (with the support of the Albanian government). Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs were uprooted and deported and ethnic Croatians, Slovenes, Bosniaks or Albanians settled in their homes. Orthodox Churches were demolished, and Serbian cultural centers were desecrated. This would later become known to the Serbian community as the Uništenje or Destruction. -May 18th, 1940: With Romanian forces diverted to the east, the Greek forces manage to take Sofia the capital of Bulgaria. -May 19th, 1940: Bulgarian fascist, Aleksandar Tsankov is captured and imprisoned back in Thessaloniki, Greece. The Greeks had hoped to use him as a bargaining chip if they needed to later on. -May 24th, 1940: Italian, Illyrian, Albanian and Bosnian forces supported by Macedonian and Bulgarian partisans begin the invasion of mainland Serbia heading for Belgrade. -May 30th, 1940: Romani Slobozîmos Vojska forces begin a full uprising in the Bessarabia region of the Kingdom of Romania in an attempt to liberate the Roma Concentration Camps in Transnistria. Commander Vinzenz Rose leads a partisan effort in destroying railroads, supply lines and extremely important Romanian oil refineries. He would be awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Award by the USSR after the war. This immediately cripples the Romanian supply line causing their forces near Crimea to be cut off and flanked June 1940 -June 5th, 1940: Roman Bloc forces capture Belgrade and defeat the Kingdom of Serbia thus ending the Yugoslav Civil War despite Romania and Hungary remaining active (they were already dealing with the heavy Soviet forces in the east). Romania and Hungary Post-Civil War -June 9th, 1940: Milan Nedić is executed by Illyrian-Italian forces. -June 10th, 1940: With a majority of the Romanian fascist army destroyed and their supply lines crippled by Slobozîmos Vojska forces and the Hungarian army being stretched thin between Poland, Ukraine, Romania and its own borders, the Soviets meet up with Roma forces in Odessa and begin and invasion of Romania. -June 12th, 1940: The Tiraspol Concentration Camp is liberated by Slobozîmos Vojska forces, most of its prisoners were Roma who quickly joined the brigade. -June 15th, 1940: Joint Soviet-Slobozîmos Vojska forces capture Chișinău in Romania. -June 17th, 1940: Joint Soviet-Slobozîmos Vojska forces capture Bucharest. Romania had been greatly weakened by its conflict in the Yugoslav Civil War, the work of Romani partisans and being stretching too thinly. The fascist leader of Romania, Ion Antonescu, is executed and the Romanian communist, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, is installed as the new leader of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Many Roma living in Romania would go on to join the Slobozîmos Vojska and join with the Soviets. -June 26th, 1940: Soviet forces invade Hungary which had already been greatly weakened by the Yugoslav Civil War. -July 1st, 1940: Soviet forces take Budapest and liberate Hungary. Ferenc Szálasi, the fascist leader of Hungary commits suicide in a Hungarian bunker. Aftermath Prime Minister Shefqet Vërlaci of the Kingdom of Albania is deposed for subordination to the Kingdom of Italy and the more loyal Mustafa Merlika-Kruja is appointed as the new Prime Minister. Benito Mussolini calls a meeting of the Roman Bloc in the Italian City of Trieste following the end of the Yugoslav Civil War despite the Versailles War still raging on. It is attended by Benito Mussolini of the Kingdom of Italy, António de Oliveira Salazar of the Portuguese Republic, Francisco Franco of the Spanish State, Slavko Kvaternik of the Illyrian Republic, Ioannis Metaxas of the Kingdom of Greece and Mustafa Merlika-Kruja of the Kingdom of Albania at what would become known as the Trieste Conference. Trieste Conference: -The Kingdom of Serbia will be partitioned with Albania annexing Kosovo and northwestern Macedonia, Illyria annexing southern parts of Bosnia, Greece annexing parts of southern Macedonian and southern Bulgaria. -The Ex-Yugoslav/Serbian Monarchy will be sent into exile in Sardinia. Serbia will be reconstructed as a Totalist Country known as the Serbian Free State. -Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Macedonia will be established as independent states with a Totalist government that was favorable to the Roman Bloc. -Ethnic Serbs will be deported from the Illyrian Republic, Bosnian Free State and the Kingdom of Montenegro. -The Kingdom of Italy shall gain control over the Islands of Dalmatia. While Mussolini had wanted to expand his reaches into Croatia he didn’t want to start another war just yet. On August 10th, 1940, Muhamed Hadžiefendić is appointed as the Prime Minister of Bosnia, Krsto Popović is appointed as the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dimitrije Ljotić is appointed as the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ivan Mihailov is appointed as the Prime Minister of Macedonia and Bogdan Filov is appointed the Prime Minister of Bulgaria.Category:Wars